Toronto Hydro is telling customers how much more time they'll spend without power if the utility doesn't get rate increases.

Toronto residents can expect their hydro bills to jump by about $1 a month in May because of a rate increase granted to Toronto Hydro.

But the company wants to charge increases more than double that amount in each year from 2015 through 2019.

It warns that if it doesn’t get the accelerated increases starting next year, a typical resident will spend an extra 44 minutes a year sitting in the dark.

The Ontario Energy Board granted Toronto Hydro an increase on Tuesday for its 2014 rates. It means a customer using 800 kilowatt hours a month, who now pays $124 monthly, will pay $1 a month more. (The figure, supplied by Toronto Hydro, doesn’t include the Ontario Clean Energy Benefit — a 10 per cent rebate — or GST.)

Toronto Hydro, owned by the City of Toronto, says it will need steeper increases than this year’s one for the period from 2015 to 2019, if customers want better service.

In material filed with the board, Toronto Hydro says it will need increases averaging $2.35 a month for a residential customer in each year from 2015 to 2019 in order to modernize its system.

The Ontario Energy Board has ordered the company, as part of its rate application, to survey customers about the proposed increases. Toronto Hydro has complied by posting a “workbook” that intersperses the company’s rationale for a rate increase with questions about what customers would like to see.

It stresses the company’s contention that it needs to spend heavily to upgrade an aging system — an argument that the energy board has not wholly accepted in the past.

The city-owned utility says that 30 per cent of its equipment has already exceeded its expected lifetime while another 27 per cent needs to be replaced by 2030.

Toronto Hydro says one option is to proceed at a minimal pace, letting non-critical equipment break down before replacing it. That would mean increasing rates by $1.24 a month, each year from 2015 to 2019.

Or it can be more aggressive, replacing obsolete equipment before it fails and modernizing the system. That would require an increase of $2.35 a month each year.

The difference in service? Under the more aggressive plan, the average resident would spend about 39 minutes a year without power.

If the company opts for minimal spending, it says the average customer will spend 83 minutes a year in the dark.

Some customers will suffer more than others. With minimal spending, 13 per cent of customers will have seven or more outages a year. With the higher spending, only 6 per cent of customers will have that many outages.

Toronto Hydro has ratcheted up its capital spending dramatically in the past few years.

Spending had been $175 million a year or less up to 2009. It jumped to $260 million in 2010, $429 million in 2011, and has averaged $355 million a year since then. The company says it hasn’t finalized estimates for what it will need to spend from 2015 onward.

The energy board hasn’t always given the company what it wants. Toronto Hydro had asked for permission to spend more heavily from 2012 to 2014, but was firmly rebuked by the board.

The board said Toronto Hydro hadn’t proved that service was eroding, and criticized the company for failing to improve productivity.

Toronto Hydro responded by cutting both contract and regular staff through layoffs and buyouts.

More on thestar.com

We value respectful and thoughtful discussion. Readers are encouraged to flag comments that fail to meet the standards outlined in our
Community Code of Conduct.
For further information, including our legal guidelines, please see our full website
Terms and Conditions.